January 2008

January 31, 2008

With extravagance so palpable in the movie “Bernard and Doris,”the opening night hit of the 2007 Hamptons International Film Festival, soon to air on HBO, you'll think the budget was unlimited. But no, said director Bob Balaban at an extravagant celebration for the film at the Time Warner Center last night: “You will see Susan Sarandon in a red ball gown about 9 minutes in. I said to a guy I met on the subway upon hearing he was a designer, can you make a dress? I'll give you no money, not even for the fabric.” Sure enough, about 9 minutes in, Sarandon, sublime as billionairess Doris Duke, swans down a staircase in red satin. Such is movie magic. Of course we know Balaban, the kid actor in the 1969 “Midnight Cowboy” to the Christopher Guest movies and more. But several years ago he directed a gem, “The Last Good Time”about a tender relationship between an elderly man and a teenaged girl, and with the late director Robert Altman he co-produced "Gosford Park," which like an old fashioned British mystery, featured the rigid class divisions of upstairs and down. Now in this new film he's at it again: what happens when that line is crossed? Bernard Lafferty, played by Ralph Fiennes, is a servant who becomes so much more to Duke, he eventually inherits her fortune. But this is no “Lady Chatterley's Lover!” His orientation is such that the two become drinking buddies playing dress up among the orchids in the green house. Balaban is especially adept at showing the stages of the evolving relationship between these eccentrics. Duke, it turns out, was particularly and arbitrarily cheap, firing servants for swiping booze (understandable) and for wastefully disposing of a wedge of cold cantaloupe (not). And Fiennes! So brutal in “In Bruges,” his other new film shown at Sundance last week! Here is another side of this actor, sexy even when applying mascara. A crowd worthy of “Who's Who” spilled into Porterhouse for supper: Harry Belafonte kiss kissed with Sandra Bernhard, writers Calvin Trillin,Jay McInerney,Nora Ephron, Dominick Dunne, Gay Talese schmoozed with uber-agents and editors Lynn Nesbitand Nan Talese.Wallace Shawn sat with Fran Liebowitz.Sidney Lumet, closed out of the awards for his superb “Before the Devil Knows You're Dead,”will nevertheless enjoy a retrospective of his work at Film Forum. Aida Turturro chatted with Ellen Barkin-one could not miss the irony here-who chatted with Susan Sarandon holding court in a cleavage-baring red dress. Someone asked, What's Rush Limbaugh doing here? Oh, he came with Cindy Adams, said Sarandon. Cindy bought Doris Duke's apartment and felt so proprietary she gave the film a wrap party. Not to worry. Limbaugh was balanced by the presence of Air America's Randi Rhodes

January 27, 2008

In the post-holiday present, “The Seafarer” is like a belated Christmas gift. The pleasure is seeing this small morality play, written and directed by Conor McPherson, turn into a mythic-scale tale of redemption. You ask, who wants to get inside the heads of five Irishmen with hangovers verging on their next bender? The idea is as unappealing as the body functions that go awry in a boozy loss of control. As “Joy to the World” is heard in the sitting room of a modest house in Baldoyle, near Dublin, Sharky (David Morse) descends the stair just as his elder brother Richard (Jim Norton) emerges from behind a chair, having spent the night working off a stupor. He's blind, and the toilet one-liners abound. Enter his buddy Ivan (Conleth Hill),who has been kicked out of his house by the Misses. Enter a nimble Nicky (Sean Mahon),who brings over a dapper and dour visitor Mr. Lockhart (Ciaran Hinds),and the excellent ensemble is ready for rounds of poker-and drink. Before too long, the mysterious stranger reveals his mission. Reminding Sharky of an unfortunate incident two decades prior, he's here for payback: “I want your soul,” he breathes with Mephistophelean menace. The play's title, from the Anglo-Saxon poem best known in Ezra Pound's translation, provides the universal resonance. These are sailors in only a slang sense. Sharky's reprieve at the play's end underscores the resilience of “the seafarer,” the man on life's journey whose endurance, un-buoyed, suffering and lonely, is his salvation.

January 24, 2008

Here is some footage I would like to see: Michael Moore's interview with O.J. Simpson, just after he was infamously acquitted of the murders of his wife and her friend.Moore, for a nanosecond had a talk show with a live audience that never aired and O.J. was a first guest. After he introduced the award-winning actor and Heisman trophy winner, some viewers simply walked out. Others stayed to hear Moore ask him about football and other matters before inquiring pointedly about gloves, particularly the kind that fit tight, Moore pantomimed for the crowd at the Four Seasons, at a luncheon hosted by Harvey Weinstein to honor him for the nomination of “Sicko” for a Best Documentary Oscar. Upon hearing that Moore who lives in Michigan would be in NY, Weinstein said, “Let's have lunch.” 50 people showed up at the gathering organized by Peggy Siegal: veteran talk show hosts Dick Cavettand Phil Donahue, authors Erica Jongand Jeffrey Toobin, documentarian Rory Kennedy. Noting that the documentary Oscar category was dominated by films about Iraq--the subtext of his “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Moore was pleased to be in their company, but now he is turning his prodigious attention to a new book about all that has been overlooked in these last 8 years while Iraqhas been a distraction. Having already won an Academy Award, for “Bowling for Columbine,” he is not concerned about what he will wear to the show, if there is one. A member of the Writers' Guild, he was particularly proud to be striking “The View” today. He was also proud of his Academy Award. With enormous good humor he recounted the experience: “Two young people greet you as you leave the stage. First, one hands you a glass of champagne, and then the other offers you breath mints. (You are about to meet the press.) In my case, there was a third person: “Asshole,” a stagehand called out.”

The announcement of the Academy Awards nominees marks an anniversary for Gossip Central. Just one year ago, I was writing about Salma Hayek and her spontaneous yelp upon saying her friend Penelope Cruz's name as a Best Actress nominee for Pedro Almodovar's “Volver.” That was a fun moment in an otherwise serious event, the reading off of names, even more somber this award season with ceremonies, the stars, the gowns, the hair, and so on, threatened by cancellation. For the Oscars, however, the show will go on. Ronald Harwood, named for Best Adapted Screenplay for the excellent “Diving Bell and the Butterfly” script (he won this category in 2002, for “The Pianist”), is working on the highly anticipated film version of “Suite Francaise.” That is, he was working on it. He is, of course, on strike. Let's hope all will be resolved so we can see Harwood in his tux on the red carpet once again. As for Cruz, we are mainly hearing about her as main squeeze for Javier Bardem, the frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor in “No Country for Old Men.” When he was seeing Spanish star Belen Rueda, he refused to be photographed with the beautiful, talented mother in “The Orphanage,”but with Penelope, well, that's another story. While the real gossips can mull that one over, and the Oscar commentators can busily deconstruct the meaning behind the current nominations, I will turn to one of my pet categories, the documentaries. Last year several non-fiction filmmakers turned their cameras on Iraq and what the occupation means for civilians and soldiers in that country. The results, without naming names, were award-worthy in their content, not so in artistry. This year, with nods to Charles Ferguson's “No End in Sight” and Alex Gibney's “Taxi to the Dark Side,” the art has caught up to the content. Drawing on interviews with high-level government officials, Ferguson's film is an insider look at the decision-making up to and after the toppling of Saddam's regime. Despite intelligence predicting the drawn-out consequences of this pursuit, Bush's regime launched the invasion with only 60 days of preparation. The administration may contend we are “winning,” or that hindsight is 50-50, but Ferguson shows irrefutably the manipulations that went into selling this “war.” By the time of a special screening and dinner in honor of the film in December, it had come to the attention of key White House personnel, and had made the documentary Academy Award short list. The Executive Producer of “No End in Sight” is Alex Gibney, whose “Taxi to the Dark Side” is also nominated. Through the story of Dilawar, a taxi driver from a farming community who was arrested, taken to a prison in Bagram, and tortured to death within 5 days of arriving, Gibney tells the larger story of government sanctioned brutality that makes the scandal at Abu Ghraib seem like official policy, not the anomaly we are told to believe. Accountability goes all the way to the top, and yet, as Gibney makes clear, our administration has spent most of this period tweaking legislation so that the only ones prosecuted are the lowest level military who found themselves in the bind of having no training in interrogation and the pressure to produce “results.” Most poignant in Gibney's pursuit of justice is the indignation of his father who had been an interrogator in World War II and could see the erosion of American values in current inept practices. That these extraordinary films are nominated is intensely satisfying to those of us who are looking for responsible leadership in America

January 19, 2008

The scroll is still in town! The celebrated 120 foot manuscript of Jack Kerouac'smost famous novel, “On the Road,” sits in its glass case, ushering visitors into the best exhibitionabout a writer I have ever seen. The credit goes to curator Isaac Gewirtz for his smarts and sensitivity in organizing the material now housed in the library's Berg Collection into this comprehensive show and its excellent well-researched companion volume. But the scroll won't be here for long--soon to be replaced by a fake for the rest of the exhibition, while the real thing tours like a rock star. On Thursday night, for the beat fellowship there to party, rocker and poet Patti Smithin her plaid Kerouac shirt and watch cap performed a tune especially for the occasion. “Jack, I never knew you, but I knew your friends. Allen Ginsberg tried to pick me up because he thought I was a pretty boy,” she sang to the tickled crowd including Debbie Harry, the Kerouac estate, scholars, publishers, filmmakers all supping on steak with horseradish sauce. Smith also sang duets with composer David Amram, who doubled as M.C. of this special night, and accompanied by Lenny Kaye she sang a tune called “Grateful” for our host, James Irsay, the man who woke up one morning in 2001, flew in to New York, to Christie's auction house and swooped up his literary prize for a whopping $2.43 million, the most ever paid for a manuscript. The owner of the Indianapolis Colts, Irsay is an unusual man, sharing with Kerouac a yearning for spontaneity. Wearing a light, well-starched suit, he said, sometimes suits get a bad name. “You are all artists. Your life is your canvas. I love waking up every day and not knowing what will happen.”

January 17, 2008

Alex Katz cruised the galleries on West 25th Street on Thursday night looking boyish in a leather bomber jacket. Chuck Close, the subject of a fine documentary at Film Forumwas already working the room at PaceWildenstein in his wheelchair that cranks up on its hind wheels so he can talk at eye level. The occasion was a new show of Robert Rauschenberg's “Runts,” 2007 collages in his now signature mode, pigment transfer on polylaminate, fresh as ever. The catalogue text from various writings includes a reprint from “Pop Art Redefined” (1969), hand written notes taken in 1963 on a road trip with Merce Cunningham in the Southwest: “The outcome of a work is based icy ice on amount of intensity concentration and joy that is pursued roadcrossing in the act of work.” Words inter-cut with scenes along the road read like William Burroughs's cut-up experiments of the early '60's, and exude the power of collage-like juxtapositions in language. Check out the totemic motifs of “Holy Moly” with archaic statuary set against graffiti.

On Saturday, the night belonged to Israeli painter Yigal Ozeri at the Mike Weiss Galleryon 24th Street. His new work, “Genesis,” now featured on the cover of “Gallery Guide,” portrays in sensual realism a young woman caught in vines, evoking the pre-Raphaelite imagery of Ophelia floating among the water lilies. Ozeri's model, Priscilla Bills, was there for the festivities, her dredlocks woven into twin buns. Her wide blue-eyed innocence makes her ideal for the emblematic female sexuality Ozeri wishes to encapsulate. This is a stunning show of new work by an always exciting artist

January 15, 2008

Perhaps you've walked past the two vitrines at Barney's entranceway: displayed in gossamer clouds of white fabric stones and crystals of all shapes and sizes wound up in gold wire are jewels to be worn or collected. Oftentimes their creator, a Japanese woman in layers of white gossamer, would greet customers and make them her friends. This was no ordinary retail experience in one of the most luxurious and potentially stuck up stores in the world. At yesterday's memorial service for Kazuko, a photographer/ filmmaker/ actor who came to America from a prominent Japanese family on a Fulbright scholarship and who died this past August 27, the actor Matthew Modine attempted to explain that special Kazuko karma, her goal to close the gap that separates people with her art. The crowd attending at Zankel Hall, including filmmaker Paul Morrissey, film documentarian Albert Maysles and his family, listened to a piano performance of selections from Mozart and Schubert by Mitsuko Uchida and eulogies by Maureen Orth,Robert Frank, and Simon Doonanwho likened Kazuko's frenetic energy to that of a dragonfly. Having created the veil worn by Madonna in her “Like a Virgin” video, performed in John Guare's “Six Degrees of Separation,” and Frank's “ Candy Mountain,"Kazuko's varied career was shown in photos and clips. Anecdotes about her dancing in the streets, burying her bird in Central Park after a memorial at Petrossian, and her effusive emails emboldening friends to be inquisitive, open, and compassionate added to the portrait of a unique bohemian the likes of which we will not soon see again. Everywhere at the cocktail reception Kazuko crystals could be seen hanging from pins or wire chains.

January 12, 2008

Morning in Larry Rivers' downtown loft, the setting of Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's 1959 “Pull My Daisy,” the celebrated beat classic written and narrated by Jack Kerouac. In the opening sequence, the actress Delphine Seyrig pulls the curtains, letting in the day in her film debut. Now in Alain Renais' “Last Year at Marienbad,” an arthouse sensation when it first appeared in 1961 to be shown at Film Forum for a two-week run beginning on January 18, Seyrig, as dressed by Coco Chanel, is the object of desire. Ravishing in a white feather peignoir, Seyrig and even her hairdo, a helmet with bangs combed flat across her forehead, augured a fashion trend into the '60's, countering the high teased beehives of the bygone era. With elegant partiers looking on as men in tuxes play a matchstick game worthy of the Surrealists, "Marienbad" has the narrative drive of a film by Matthew Barney, and probably was an influence. Novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet was an Oscar nominee for "Marienbad"'s screenplay, mostly a poetic incantatory narration over intriguing shots through the opulent Nymphenburg Palace in Munich. The Alains, pushing the possibilities for filmmaking, wanted to reconstruct “mental” time, finding a filmic metaphor for memory in lush blacks and whites.

Currently Film Forum features the work of Otto Preminger with 23 movies screening until January 17. Preminger's career hit a highpoint in the late 1950's, with “Anatomy of a Murder,” a courtroom drama starring James Stewart as a small town lawyer, Eve Arden as his ill paid secretary, Lee Remick as a young flirty wife wronged, and Ben Gazzara, in a typical '50's crooner cut evoking Jack Kerouac as her husband, on trial for having murdered the man who raped her. The outcome is really beside the point. Preminger, who grew up in Vienna, the son of a successful Jewish lawyer, wanted audiences to feel how “innocent until proven guilty” might lead to an inconclusive, not altogether satisfying, conclusion. In the new biography, “Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King,”author Foster Hirsch tells a story about Preminger showing the film in Moscow, just to see how Russian audiences would respond. Bewildered at the American system of justice, Russian students did not understand the need for the trial: “The character should just have been beheaded.”

January 09, 2008

“Members of the same family always hate one another,” says Paul Bowles, the American writer who also composed incidental music for such Broadway fare as Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” and Lillian Hellman’s “Watch on the Rhine” in the early 20th century. In the documentary about him titled “The Complete Outsider” newly out on DVD, the line gets a knowing laugh. Nowhere is this dark truism more evident than in two plays now garnering well-deserved raves from critics and audiences. Harold Pinter’s compact Petrie dish of festering psyches, “The Homecoming,”lays bare the inner lives of an all-male family in a sitting room in North London, when one son (Gareth Saxe), now a professor of philosophy in the U.S. returns with wife in tow. One whiff of Ruth (Eve Best) and, from the patriarch (Ian McShane) to his brother (Michael McKean), and other sons (Raul Esparzaand James Frain), ego gives way to repressed animal hunger. Best was the best (sic) part of last season’s “Moon for the Misbegotten,” all movement across the great expanse of the American plains. Here her body is all restraint, but registers no less freely in head tilting, eye rolling, and the celebrated extension of a leg that had the New York Times critic Christopher Isherwoodcreaming on the paper’s pages. In “August: Osage County” Tracy Letts’ Westonfamily residing in an inventively imagined 3-story house in Oklahoma, go at one another with “killer” instincts. Their weaponry: one-liners, barbs mastered so effectively and memorably t-shirts emblazoned with the snappiest: “The world is round. Get over it,” and “All women need makeup,” are sold in the Imperial Theater lobby. The play starts with poetry from T. S. Eliot, “Life is long” and ends with “And then you’re gone,” providing the epic sweep, but oh what comes between! The language gives way to the unspeakable: let’s say that despite a genealogy offered in the Playbill, you cannot assume a character is related to another in quite the way you expected. Surprisingly, you laugh all through this 3-hour dysfunction-fest, and ask, how can bad behavior be so good?